An Examination

Sometimes I feel so unfocused. I want to read. I want to work on the design for a website. I want to write. I want to DO SOMETHING. So, I float around the apartment and somehow spend hours doing NOTHING. It's not television. That's not even on. I haven't been cleaning except for those two glasses and the plate I washed this morning. My laundry is still sitting in a pile on the bedroom floor. My plants haven't been watered. Yet I'm missing three hours from my life. How does this happen? I can't even recall how I passed them by.

I thought I was throwing my attention and energy into that website, but sometimes I feel like it's just too much work. Screen captures, sound clips, quotes, databases, links, graphics. There's so much to do, yet I'm not doing any of it. I'm happiest when I have a direction to point myself and I'm in one of those periods where there are a few ways I could go, but I can't seem to make up my mind. And so I float around and do nothing, which becomes extremely unsatisfying to me. Extremely. That anxiety that I talk about sometimes? It's worst when my energy is unfocused. Probably because my mind isn't occupied and has ample time to sit around and churn up discontent and a lingering anxiety that feeds on itself. It feels like my brain is eating itself when that happens and as you might guess, that is a disturbing and frightening feeling.

When I was younger, I hated my astrological sign. I was convinced that it just wasn't me. Don't get me wrong, I don't put much stock in horoscopes and the like, but everyone knows their sign and the traits connected to that sign. Or at least I think everyone does. Anyway, I'm a Gemini. I disliked that greatly. I wanted to be a Taurus because I thought it captured my personality much better. So, I told everyone that since I was on the cusp, that I was now officially a Taurus. I'm not a Taurus. I'm a Gemini. It took me a few years to figure that out. Perhaps not so much a textbook Gemini, but one nonetheless.

Dual-natured, elusive, complex and contradictory. But aren't we all at some point?

It produces the virtue of versatility, and on the other the vices of two-facedness and flightiness. Is this why I rarely finish things that I start?

Like children they are lively, and happy, if circumstances are right for them, or egocentric, imaginative and restless. Restless is how I've been feeling when I have free time lately. What to do? What to do?

They take up new activities enthusiastically but lack application, constantly needing new interests, flitting from project to project as apparently purposelessly as a butterfly dancing from flower to flower. Holy shit! Was this not what I just said. I throw myself into something headfirst and love it, but tire very easily and flit on to the next thing.

They are affectionate, courteous, kind, generous, and thoughtful towards the poor and suffering - provided none of the activities resulting from expressing these traits interferes too greatly with their own lives and comforts. Hahaha! I especially like that last part.

They reflect every change in their surroundings, like chameleons. Which could explain why I pick up and adopt (without my consciously knowing) the verbal quirks and gestures of those I'm around a great deal.

They can become uncertain of themselves, either withdrawn, or nervously excitable worriers, sullenly discontented, hard and irritable. Worrier? Why yes, I am.

Their concentration, though intense for a while, does not last. Why I didn't finish college. Why I never went back. Why I jump between interests so much. Why it's hard to keep my attention for longer than a few weeks. My, my...I'm just making up excuses for myself now, aren't I?

Their mental agility and energy give them a voracious appetite for knowledge from youth onward, though they dislike the labor of learning. Yes! I love knowledge and crave more, but I don't like to actually "learn" - to sit down and teach myself or have someone else teach me. I'd rather do it casual-like. Pick it up on conversation or by doing. Probably why I still don't enjoy history all that much.

In less serious situations they make witty, entertaining companions, good acquaintances rather than friends. Was this memo sent out? Was everyone told that I was an acquaintance and not a friend? Could this be why I can count the number of good friends I've had in my life on one hand? And I don't even have all of those good friends at the moment. I think a couple are even upset with me.

And then I think to myself. Anyone could make these vague descriptions fit them, even if they are not a Gemini. It's all probably a bunch of fooey.